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I just want to annotate the german language name for Gess:
It is called Gach and appeared in the german sister journal
of Sci. Am., Spektrum der Wissenschaft (sorry for the 
incomplete reference).

--JKn

It would be nice to have more than one weak old turbo pacal programm to play against and no place on the internet to play tournaments against humans.

On a real board someone should invent a 'footprint mask' with wich someone could move all nine pieces with one move of his hand. Imaging two players in a tournament and one have only a few second on his clock. In chess he moves his piece very quickly, but in gess he has up to nine pieces to move.

The rules as stated here don't make it clear that you can't use part of
your last ring to capture your opponent's last ring, or moreover break
your last ring at all. The Archimedeans'
(http://www.archim.org.uk/eureka/53/gess.htmlrules) are much more
precise:

[begin quote]
The object of the game is to capture (or disable) your opponent’s ring or
rings; if at the end of a move either player has no ring then he loses:
the player who has just moved being considered first, so you cannot use
part of your ring to take your opponent’s ring or rings. It is possible to
have more than one ring at a time—indeed this may be considered
desirable—and you may destroy one or more of your own rings provided that
you still have at least one at the end of your move.
[end quote]

This distinction is important in a game I have going on now!

I recently did a re-write of the Zillions implementation, taking advantage of some of the features which have been developed since the first coding of this game. It is currently posted at the Zillions site. But this is not the best.

This first one got me to thinking, so I went back to the drawing board and did a radical re-write. I instituted the 'classic' form of movement of the 3x3 pattern; selecting the center then moving the pattern.

This has greatly improved the performance of the implementation. Whereas, before, the engine would declare 'too many moves generated' after about two hundred thousand examined moves, I've run this new re-write over twenty-one million and haven't received this notice.

I sent off this current update to Zillions and it should be available by the end of the week.

And all this tinkering got me to thinking about a GESS variant. What if the player was not allowed to move a 3x3 pattern onto friendly Stones? Only enemy Stones would be eligible for capture, all other moves would be to vacant cells.

Is there an advantage to being able to capture friendly Stones? Is there a disadvantage to only capturing enemy Stones?

The new improved implementation is now available at the Zillions site.

In addition to the 'classic' form of movement for the 3x3 patterns, I've added a few 'engrams' to help Zillions' AI to play a more effective game.

The first was the condition of a win if there are no opponent pieces on the field. This encourages the computer player to make more captures of opponent Stones than friendly ones. Thus reducing the 'suicidal' tendency of earlier versions.

The second was a loss condition for repetition of position. I am unaware of this particular condition being mentioned in the rules, but it reduces the repetitive behaviour in the lower setting of Strength.

I highly recommend that players set the Strength to at least 8, or allow three minutes for a move. This should offer a very nice game. Patient players may opt for higher settings.

1. The description doesn't make it clear that the center of a piece can be
on one of the side rows (a, t, 1, 20). This means that Black may start the
game with the move a3-b3. See
http://www.archim.org.uk/eureka/53/gess.html.

2. I don't know if it is allowed to move the center of a piece onto a
side row. Is black allowed to start a game with r3-t3, capturing four of
his stones? Or can a piece move only so far as to move the direction stone
onto a side row?

Game Courier Preset with automation and rule-enforcement:

/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DGess%26settings%3DGess+with+rules

''Meta-chess,'' which Yu Ren Dong today describes Gess as fullfilling, I used recently for Betza's Buypoint, 
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=25886. What is the difference between a Cluster and a Meta-chess? In the degree of actualization. CVs could have stayed meta-chesses mostly back in the 1990s onwards. They instead diverged into the ones by ones by ones comprising Clusters, one or another totalling 20 or 25, we have today.  Classifications categorizing them all, the CVs, will bring them down to earth, the way classification of finite simple groups is accomplished. Gess as unique is Meta-chess and will probably stay that way and not get clustered by copycats and near-works.  Instead the original Gess may get a variant or two, or slight rules modification, and still be considered Archimedeans Mathematics Society's Gess; that makes it easier on everyone. Since my other comment five years ago I played Gess for the rating. Is it really Chess having only one piece-type that has to emerge fluctuating from play? Mind games like Gess, in their own spaces un-chess-like but strategic, the category ''Track Two Chess'' accomodates however far removed the standard 64-square f.i.d.e.

Player must keep a Ring of 3x3 made from the stones, and to win is to destroy opponent last Ring.  Stones move in 3x3s. This appeared first in Spektrum der Wissenschaft.

I want to play with someone! :) 

Gess for zilions games!

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You can also play Gess against other players or the AI on PlayGess website.